Toronto Maple Leafs: Health Is A Silent Rebuilding Key

When the Toronto Maple Leafs hired Dr. Jeremy Bettle earlier in the off-season they were adding another asset to the organization.

From Sportsnet on the day of the hire:

“According to the Leafs’ press release, Bettle will “oversee all areas of the Maple Leafs, Marlies and prospects as it relates to strength and conditioning, nutrition, injury prevention, injury rehabilitation and all factors pertaining to athlete performance optimization.” (Sportsnet)

Everything in that statement is part of remaining healthy – and that’s a huge part of the Toronto Maple Leafs rebuild that doesn’t get touched on a lot.

Prospects can’t develop if they’re injured and current roster players growth on the ice also gets put on pause when they get hurt. There’s nothing fancy about the thought, it’s pretty cut and dry.

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The Toronto Maple Leafs have a great resource at their disposal right now to make sure that not only are the prospects conditioning well, but that they’re working on keeping themselves in a state of high performance all of the time.

Take Tomas Hertl of the San Jose Sharks, for example, who suffered a knee injury prior to during his rookie campaign in 2013-2014. Hertl was having a tremendous rookie season until the injury. When he returned he wasn’t the same player and it could be argued that his growth was stunted for the 2014-2015 season because of the injury as well.

Imagine an injury to William Nylander. When he returns will he be on the same trajectory, or will he need additional time to return to an upward trend? I’d wager on the latter. Until a young player has hit their highest talent plateau an injury can be more affecting on the ice as opposed to a seasoned 27 year old coming back from injury.

Bettle is with the Toronto Maple Leafs so that the organization is able to say that they’ve done everything they possibly could have to prevent injury and maximize the athletic performance of their players. Maximum protection of assets begins as soon as the players are drafted, or signed.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have been one of the healthiest teams in the National Hockey League over the past six seasons, but that didn’t stop the new front office from making a calculated decision to strengthen the organization.

(numbers from mangameslost.com)

Over the past six seasons, the Toronto Maple Leafs find themselves 21st in overall man games lost.

Toronto is doing all the pre-work they can to try and avoid being the Columbus Blue Jackets of last year, or the Pittsburgh Penguins of the last six, when they come out of this rebuild.

Last season, many people had Columbus pegged to make the playoffs. That was, of course, before they suffered 393 man games lost due to injury – more than any other team in the NHL.

Everyone has expected the Penguins to win more than one Stanley Cup with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, but it’s hard to win the Stanley Cup when you’re constantly decimated by injuries. From ’09 to ’10 no team has had a higher ‘time missed impact‘ rating than the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Sometimes it’s OK to use injuries as an excuse, but you need to know that you’ve done everything in your power to prevent them. Injuries are going to happen, that’s life, but it’s one aspect of the rebuild that is important – and clearly being given attention by the front office.

Next: Are More Trades Coming?

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